Online: Wandering Site — Inspiration Across Disciplinary Boundaries

This seminar allows interdisciplinary collaboration through the process of aesthetic transformation. We will start the process from a unique place in the Berlin cityscape and develop individual concepts from there. The focus will lie on the idea-generating process: How do we generate ideas and pass on inspiration? The aim is to fuel each other's creative process by generating new resources that can extend collaborators’ imaginative and interpretative capacities into uncharted realms.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this course will be facilitated online using a mixture of daily live-sessions and guided tasks to be completed.

In this seminar, a focus lies on idea-generating processes with following questions:

1. How does inspiration come about?

2. How do we find ideas?

3. How can we creatively work together as a group of people with various disciplinary backgrounds?

This course is aimed at artists of all disciplines, designers, architects and people working in the creative sector who would like to experiment in an interdisciplinary environment. The workshop introduces participants to the strategy of ‘Aesthetic Transformation’, a distinct artistic practice which facilitates the stimulating interactions of different protagonists across disciplinary boundaries. The participants initiate a process by finding inspiration in someone else’s work and then develop new creation based on it. In the following chain reaction of artworks, ideas are transformed by different disciplines, media and techniques. The process of translation from one work into the next is the central momentum of this creative process - new works derive from another discipline and the work of another participant.

In this way a dialogical response setting is created through which they will generate new concepts and ideas. This will include the application of chance operations and strategies of improvisation in order to accelerate the creative action. The process will result in an outcome interdependence of interconnected creative works. Online group conversations and readings will allow for a critical inquiry of contemporary art practices as well as own creative practices.

‘Aesthetic Transformation’ embraces processes of mutual inspiration and influence within the arts and other fields in and outside of academia. It is based on the fundamental idea that every creative work operates in a system of relationships to other fields, disciplines, as well as contexts, and, therefore, to what others have already created.

Given the current Covid19 pandemic, this course will be facilitated online. We will delve into what field work in times of physical distancing could mean and how we, as a group, may use digital technology for interdisciplinary collaboration. What does it mean for the inspirational process if we meet in representational space only? This class requires participants to join an online teaching framework, but it does not require to work exclusively digitally. We welcome participants from different time zones and the course will be designed with asynchronus teaching and learning in mind.

A transformation process and artistic chain reaction needs a starting point. Instead of taking a joint field trip in the city of Berlin, we will explore the relationship between digital space and real space and examine creatively how a place can serve as a source for inspiration in our respective locations. Through sound, video, performance, drawing, dance, sculpture, or other visual or conceptual forms of artistic expression, participants will respond to a chosen site and develop their own theme(s) by connecting it with their locations and perspective in the world. Sequential works that act upon multiple interpretative statements will follow. Individual works will connect to others, and, in this way, a collective, multi-perspective investigation on the chosen topic will unfold. The transformation process will conclude with final works to be showcased in a public online presentation.

SCHEDULE

Monday

Title: Wandering Site - Inspiration across Disciplinary Boundaries

Video Conference: Welcome, Introduction

Elvira & Margit and the seminar participants
Formulating goals of the seminar: leading thought/transformation fabric

Module 1

Video Lecture: Introduction into Aesthetic Transformation processes

Exercise: Generating a first inkling
Dialogical response and Aesthetic Transformation step1

Theory Reading 1

Tuesday

Submit first response to online platform

Module 2

Video Lecture: Improvisation and Creativity

Video Conference: Discussion forum 1

Reflection of inklings, conversation about first responses
What does it mean to respond to the work of others?

Individual Work Session: Limiting factors in creative processes

Dialogical Response and Aesthetic Transformation step 2

Submit second response to online platform

Theory Reading 2

Wednesday

Module 3

Video Lecture: Creativity as category shifting

Video Conference: Discussion forum 2

Reflection and feedback conversation

Individual Work Session: Aesthetic Transformation game – Chance operations

Dialogical Response and Aesthetic Transformation Step 3

Submit third response to online platform

Theory Reading 3

Thursday

Module 4

Video Lecture: Inspiration Across Boundaries

Video Conference: Discussion forum 3

Reflection and feedback conversation

Developing final work

Work session: Condensation of ideas
Dialogical Response and Aesthetic Transformation Step 4

Final Work: Submit fourth response to online platform

Friday

Final Presentations online

Video Conference: Discussion forum 4

Reflection and feedback conversation

Final review and closing contributions

Public online exhibition

Syllabus may be subject to change.

Elvira Hufschmid is a multi-media artist, curator, and author in the field of processes of aesthetic transformation and temporary art spaces. She collaborates with Dr. Margit Schild as a fellow/affiliated researcher at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts & Sciences (BAS) at the Berlin University of the Arts, with the research project Leaning Out of Windows – Art & Physics Collaborations through Aesthetic Transformations. Associated to Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada, the project brings international scholars and researchers from major particle physics laboratories (TRIUMF Vancouver, Fermilab Chicago) into a conversation with an international team of contemporary artists in order to explore how knowledge can be translated across (disciplinary) communities. Elvira received her MA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, US, and is currently a first-year Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, Canada.

elvira-hufschmid.de
leaningoutofwindows.org

 

Dr.-Ing. Margit Schild is a filmmaker, artist, and curator. She received a doctorate at the University of Hanover and studied Landscape and Open Space Planning, and worked as a lecturer and guest professor at various universities, including the Berlin University of the Arts and Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. She collaborates with Elvira Hufschmid as a fellow/affiliated researcher at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts & Sciences (BAS) at the Berlin University of the Arts, with the research project Leaning Out of Windows – Art & Physics Collaborations through aesthetic transformations. In 2015, she directed her first documentary film Drifting on flight and migration. The documentary Orten is her first full-length film. In addition to her work as a director, she is a co-founder of the School of the Provisional. In Autumn 2020, Margit was curating a symposium on Improvisation at the HKW House of World Cultures. She lives and works in Berlin as well as in Canada.

leaningoutofwindows.org
less-art.de